


Stormy Weather

by bioticbootyshaker



Category: Dragon Age II
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-23
Updated: 2013-06-23
Packaged: 2017-12-15 22:51:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,258
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/854889
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bioticbootyshaker/pseuds/bioticbootyshaker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the destruction of the Chantry, Fenris and Isabela take to the seas and leave everything behind them. With distant shores to look forward to, Fenris comes to discover what it means to be truly free.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stormy Weather

_Oh, and it's breaking over me,_  
A thousand miles down to the seabed,  
I found the place to rest my head. 

_Never let me go, never let me go._

 

**i. Freedom**

Fenris had never liked the ocean. Everything was too open, too expansive. It took his breath away and made him feel small and forgotten. He imagined he could fall into the waters, sink beneath the crashing waves, and be lost forever, with no voice shouting his name into the black depths, and no heart to ache for him.

The first time he’d crossed the ocean, he had been alone. Nothing more than an item going to auction to be given to the highest bidder. He had cursed the salt air and the sting of mist against his eyes and throat. He had cursed his fate, his heart immolated by cruel fire, set to burn to ashes. 

This time, he wasn’t alone, and the collar around his throat and the chains around his wrists had been broken. He stepped on board the ship a free man, he leaned against the railing a free man, he smelled the sea air and exhaled deeply and smiled up at the sun a _free man_.

Better still, Isabela was there, her palm warm over his knuckles, her lips a few degrees warmer against the line of his jaw. In many ways, she had saved him, though she seemed reticent to admit to such a thing. “I don’t save people, sweetheart. That’s not really in my job description. You’re not that weak, and I’m not that noble.”

But she had been the one to touch him, to find him in the darkness and pull him out into blinding, brilliant light. She had been the one that had found the old scars and touched them with ineffable tenderness; she had been the one who had cradled him in her arms when the world had seemed to crash down around him, and she had been the one to whisper that everything would be all right. If he could trust in her, if he could focus on the beating of her heart and the warmth of her arms and the line of freckles at her throat, and on nothing else.

The world had been the ocean; dark, dangerous, uncompromising, unfeeling; _ceaseless_ and battering against him with tremendous power and weight. And Isabela had been an island, warm and safe, that he had washed upon.

Had he the courage to cut himself open, Isabela would have known what she meant to him. But as it stood, she only knew that he had taken to the seas with her, that he wanted to put as much space between himself and the Free Marches as he could. Most likely Isabela believed his eagerness to leave Kirkwall had to do with what Anders had done, but in actuality, it had nothing to do with the damnable mage. It had nothing to do with the Chantry, or with the Circles rising up against the Templars and bathing the land in blood and fire.

It had everything to do with _her_. To be near her was to be reminded of his freedom. His freedom to curl his toes in warm sand and land on distant shores where no one knew his name or what he had once been. His freedom to taste the air of a new land, to taste the familiar flavor of Isabela’s mouth and body and be a slave to nothing but his own desires.

The sun was setting, painting the sky orange-red, the clouds reduced to wispy shadows. Fenris sometimes imagined he had taken flight, up into the sky where the earth below was nothing but distant shorelines and the craggy peaks of mountains. He imagined he was entirely uncaged and untethered, leaving even his skin and bones to live in the clouds.

And then he looked down and saw the brands, saw the scars overlaid, cross-stitched on his flesh, and he plummeted to the earth. He could be free of everything, but never of his memories.

They were a beautiful burden, a terrible blessing. He had lost them for so long, and _he_ had been lost; nothing more than a bag of bones left to wander aimlessly. With his memories, he had purpose, he had something to motivate him, something to outrun, something dark that he thought he might one day be able to embrace. Yet still, they haunted him. They hounded him. They refused him sleep and made his laughter and his chest hollow.

Isabela breathed into him. Maybe she wasn’t a savior, or a heroine, or even an island he could crash against when the storms grew too violent; but she was a good woman. She was a friend and a lover. She was the one who listened when he spoke, and filled the empty spaces inside of him. She was the one who kept her hand over his, even when the sun sank below the horizon and the air grew chilly. 

Even when he hardly knew who he was or where he was going.

**ii. Storm**

It took some prodding, but Isabela managed to convince Fenris to come below decks when they sailed into the storm. The ship rocked violently, and she collapsed against him as they descended the stairs, pressing Fenris against the wall and pinning his narrow hips between her thighs. Their lips hovered, inches apart, before he closed the short distance and crushed her lips in a kiss.

Lightning flashed, illuminating the short stairway and the shapes of their bodies. They were one shadow, seamlessly intertwined. Isabela was dizzy from the kiss, from the crashing waves and the electric air and the booming thunder. She breathed in Fenris’ exhale, before filling him with her own and slipping her tongue between his teeth. 

Sex had always reminded her of a savage storm on the ocean. You could get tossed around so easily, lost to the ravages of pure, primal nature. Everything was hot like lightning, deafening like thunder, sweet and furious like the waves. Your every sense was heightened, strengthened until you thought you might go mad from it. Isabela had never claimed to be an expert on many things; but when it came to storms and sex, she prided herself on her expertise. 

Fenris was his own storm, dark and brooding and dangerously wilder than he seemed. Yet he was the sweetest storm Isabela had ever known. He crashed against her, and he was brittle, and he was strong, and he was nothing more than what he _could_ be. She loved him, she realized, with a suddenness that left her a little breathless -- though she imagined Fenris’ kiss had something to do with that as well. She loved him _because_ he was indefinable. A treasure with no gold and no baubles, a map with no destination clearly marked, a shoreline she might have known in another life.

Sometimes when Fenris kissed her, Isabela believed she _had_ known him in another life, in another body, in another time and place. It was silly to think that way, entirely childish, but she was helpless against it. His mouth tasted so familiar, his body felt so... _right_ under her hands, like he had been made to be touched by her.

Like she had been made to touch him.

Fenris pulled her closer, not content with having her simply tangled around him. He wanted her to melt into him, to fill up his blood and his bones. Isabela wanted to tell him he was strong enough to shatter the sky and split the ocean, but she was breathless and reeling, and Fenris was all over her. 

The storm raged, but Isabela was lost in her own storm, caught in a monsoon of Fenris’ arms and mouth and lithe, beautiful body. They found the bed in the darkness, Isabela’s knees going out from under her, tumbling her across the bed. She pulled Fenris down on top of her; to be without his electric heat for even a moment was far too long. He slipped easily between her thighs, fitted there like he’d been made for the shape of her, for the tension of her legs and the caress of her fingertips. He kissed her and stole her breath. He dragged his nails down her thigh and made her arch against him.

Freedom was a dangerous thing. But it was a necessary thing, as vital to life as breath and water. He had freed himself, but that didn’t make him free. He was chained to the life he had known, chained to a shore that had never truly been home, chained to the ghost of a man who had known only how to hurt and be cruel. 

He was free when he was inside of her. Isabela could feel the change, could see it in his eyes, even in the darkness. The shackles fell off, the chains broke, the collar around his throat loosened and snapped. He was free in their bed and in her body; free to be as wild as he liked, or as docile; free to chart his map on the freckles of her throat and set sail from the sweet port of her hips. 

Whatever happened, Isabela felt confident they could face anything so long as they stood together. She had no idea what shore they might wash up on, or who might be waiting for them, but she knew that Fenris was strong enough to shatter the sky, and she knew that she was strong enough to split the earth. They could be a force if they chose to be; but in that moment, and in the moments that followed, all they chose was to be together. 

Sebastian had told her: _It’s frightening, isn’t it? Realizing you have the potential to be a better person._

And it was. It was frightening, and exhilarating, and overwhelming. It made her feel small enough to become lost, and large enough to reach into the clouds and curl her fingers around the sun. For so long, Isabela had believed she was incapable of change, of growth, or tearing her chest open and letting the treasure she kept hidden there tumble out. But she had the potential to be better, and now, she had the reason. 

Curled against her hip with his head on her breast and his body slicked with sweat. Isabela kissed his forehead, cradling the back of his head like he hadn’t just fucked her, like his come wasn’t wet and warm on her thigh. Sometimes, though, he seemed terribly small, and terribly lost.

“You take me to strange places,” Fenris whispered.

She knew that when Fenris said that, what he meant was that he loved her, and he needed her, and he craved her more than he could ever put into words. It was difficult to speak around your own pride, and your own fear. He might have said the words, Isabela guessed, before he’d known her; he might have taken some pretty little boy or girl to bed and whispered the words in a hot rush against their throat. And he might have laid there with them, trembling, too frightened to say the words again; too choked on his own pride.

For Isabela, love had never been a matter of pride. It had seemed a fanciful thing when she’d been younger. Something for the privileged, perhaps, who could afford to pin their hearts to their sleeves and dream of pretty things. Isabela didn’t have the luxury of daydreaming and falling in and out of heady infatuation. She’d been poor, and promised to a man three times her age, and all dreaming had ended then and there.

When she held Fenris... sometimes she dreamed. 

Sometimes she dreamed of shorelines bathed in sunshine. Sometimes she dreamed of Fenris’ hand in hers, and his eyes full of sunlight and his shoulders dark and bare. Sometimes she even dreamed of his mouth against hers and the sweet taste of his tongue and the way he filled her mouth and lungs with his laughter. 

Really, Fenris led her to strange places. He made her giddy, light-headed, light- _hearted_. He forced his way under her ribs and into her heart, and Isabela didn’t know how to cut him out. What scared her the most was that she didn’t want to. Her heart felt big enough for the both of them, and she liked the way he fit there, liked the way he filled up spaces and lit up dark corners.

Isabela kissed his forehead again. She smoothed his hair back from his brow and curled her fingers against the narrow curve of his hip. He was wet, and trembling, and beautifully, wonderfully, terrifyingly _free_. And she wanted to be free with him. She wanted to get lost in the storm and lost in the waves and lost at the end of his breath.

She laughed, because it was filling her up, because it was either laugh or cry, and she had never been one for tears.

“You haven’t seen anything yet, sweetheart,” Isabela whispered. She kissed her way to his mouth, and filled him with her tongue and breath. Fenris held her, thumb stroking her breast, palm flat against her chest. He felt the beating of her heart and he whispered against her mouth and her teeth, and she couldn’t hear him.

Isabela kissed him back like she had built her entire life around the shape of his mouth and the curl of his tongue.

Maybe she had.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for lifeofkj on tumblr! :)  
> This pairing, man...  
> I love them so much. ;___;


End file.
